In an art class she teaches, Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez asks students to write down a bad memory in a journal, then paint over it in white.

The last step of the exercise is to "paint something beautiful over it," Vasquez says. The idea is not to gloss over the past, but "to try to move that memory into something different."

She puts the same concept to work in Sobreviviente: Gunaa Xoo Transforming Life, a multimedia exhibit at Bihl Haus Arts. The exhibit was partly inspired by a series of interviews she conducted with women who experienced domestic abuse.

"Sobreviviente" means "survivor" in Spanish; "Gunaa Xoo" is "strong woman" in Zapotec, the language spoken by the matriarchal Tehuanas of Oaxaca, Mexico.

"We call it a healing exhibition," Vasquez says.

The installation transforms the space into a domestic setting divided into a back yard, kitchen, living room and bedroom. Art hangs from the rafters and climbs the walls. Faint traces of abusive words are visible through fresh layers of paint. Stylized flowers, plucked from Aztec and Mayan codices, have sprung up in their stead.

Certainly, this is a new approach for an artist known for her politically charged, confrontational imagery.

"One of the realizations that I've had over the last year is that we can't fight violence with violence," she says.

At the entrance to the bedroom section, a portrait in midnight blue with DayGlo-orange accents depicts a woman, her head tipped back, holding a trumpet to her lips. Titled Adela, the painting is a portrait of one of Vasquez's interviewees, who spoke to her about being sexually abused as a child.

"She always played before, and then just stopped," Vasquez says. "This has been really healing for her. ... She's learning to play again."

Vasquez painted the portrait over a previous work, a protest piece about California's Proposition 187, a ballot measure that sought to strip immigrants of health care and other services. Inspired by a newspaper account, the earlier painting was of a woman holding a baby who had died because of a lack of medical treatment.

In a way, painting over previous works "was freeing," Vasquez says, "because we do become attached to our work."

Nearby is a portrait of Vasquez's mother, who died in 2001. It shows her as an elegant young woman dressed in an embroidered huipil, her black hair styled in fingerwaves.

"I always include her in my work because she was the one that taught me that everything can be fixed," Vasquez says.

In the bedroom area, two images framed by windows hang side by side. In one, the viewer looks out on the nude figure of a woman, illuminated by the moon. A child dressed in the trappings of female adulthood - makeup and jewelry - stares out of the other.

The nude is a companion piece to an earlier work by Vasquez titled I Hung the Moon for You, Baby, a painting of a woman who from afar appears to be moon bathing, but on closer inspection, lies dead - telltale cuts and bruises on her skin.

"This is a piece that's a little bit different - same woman, but she's not dead," Vasquez says. "The scars are healed."

The center of the space is occupied by a bed covered in a white chenille bedspread.

A vintage orange, hard-shell suitcase sits at its foot, propped open to reveal the meager belongings inside.

"This is about fleeing. What do we take with us when we're going to go?" Vasquez says. "A change of clothes? Underwear? Bra? Toiletries?"

In the living room area, a series of mixed-media portraits are grouped together. In the most powerful of the images, Sobreviviente: La Biki a child is helping his mother heal, sewing together the torn flesh that has left her heart exposed with a needle and thread.

Depending on how the viewer goes through the exhibit, it either begins or ends in the kitchen - perhaps both.

It is a cozy setting with a bright yellow Formica top table. On a blue screen door, Vasquez has written "Mi mama made me atrancar la puerta every time she went to hang the ropa."

Yes, Vasquez says, her mother would ask her to lock the door each time she went out to hang the washing, because "El Diablo no duerme" - "The devil doesn't sleep."

And, no, the young Vasquez would not always listen, until the day when a stranger did try to break into the house while her mother was occupied with the laundry.

But the home that Vasquez has created at Bihl Haus Arts is a safe place.

"I always say if there's anywhere in the world that you should be safe, it's in your home," she says.